Bruce Arena resigns as US coach after World Cup bid fail

NEW YORK — Bruce Arena resigned as U.S. men's national team coach on Friday, three days after the Americans failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1986.

The U.S. Soccer Federation said within 10 days it will announce an interim coach for planned exhibition games next month.

USSF President Sunil Gulati, speaking during a telephone news conference, said he did not plan to resign. He said it was not the right time to talk about whether he will seek a fourth four-year term during the federation's annual meeting from Feb. 8-11 but did say it recent weeks he had sent letters to people seeking to be nominated.

"This is a big shock to the system. We understand that. We understand how much frustration, anger, disappointment, hurt there is," he said.

Gulati said the federation held a board meeting Thursday night and will seek "outside expertise" as it evaluates what went wrong.

"We'll look at everything, from our player development programs to our coaching to our refereeing to our facilities to the play-to-play model to the role of education and universities," he said. "Where we need to make major changes, we'll do that. Where we need to make incremental changes, we'll do that. We'll take out time with that and unfortunately we have the luxury of time before we have competitive games again with the senior team."

A 66-year-old member of the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame, Arena coached the U.S. to its greatest success in the modern era, from 1998-2006, then was fired by Gulati.

Arena was brought back last November after a 0-2 start in the final round of qualifying in the North and Central American region under Jurgen Klinsmann. The Americans were unbeaten in their first 14 games under Arena, winning its third CONCACAF Gold Cup under him, but they lost a home qualifier to Costa Rica 2-0 last month, putting a berth in danger.

A 4-0 home win over Panama put the U.S. back in position for an eighth straight World Cup trip and the Americans needed only a draw at Trinidad and Tobago, the world's 99th-ranked team. After months of constant lineup changes, Arena kept the same 11 starters, and the Americans fell behind by two goals in the first half and lost 2-1.

With three wins, four losses and three ties, the Americans finished fifth among six teams in the hexagonal. Panama climbed to third and qualified, and Honduras finished fourth and will meet Australia in a playoff next month for a berth.

"This certainly is a major setback," Arena said in a statement. "Questions rightly should be asked about how we can improve."

Arena was 10-2-6 in his second term, leaving him with an 81-32-35 record and the most wins among U.S. coaches.

"I maintain a fierce belief that we are heading in the right direction," he said. "I believe in the American player and the American coach, and with our combined efforts the future remains bright."

Gulati ruled out his own resignation after the qualifying failure.

"Most coaches do, but it's not the cases that most presidents do, and I'm not planning to," he said. "We've got a lot of things on our agenda, including a World Cup bid that is due in the end of March and a decision in June."

He said he would consider running for another term because of "where the sport is now and the role I've played in it and the role I think I can play going forward if I choose to run."

"The sport is in a very, very different place than it was 10 years ago or 30 years ago when I first got involved," he said.